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Posted on January 12, 2025 at 8:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Here are the literary birthdays to celebrate over the week of January 12, 2025.
Jack London (January 12, 1876): London, best known for The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and “To Build a Fire,” was among the most extensively translated and best-paid authors of his time.
Haruki Murakami (January 12, 1949): Murakami — whose works include Killing Commendatore, Norwegian Wood, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle — has won a number of prizes worldwide, and his work has been translated into over fifty languages.
Walter Mosley (January 12, 1952): Mosley has written over sixty books — including Down the River and Unto the Sea and Devil in a Blue Dress — in a variety of genres and has been translated into twenty-five languages.
Horatio Alger Jr. (January 13, 1832): Alger’s hundred-plus books — formulaic, moralistic tales of how poor boys overcame obstacles by being good — sold over 20 million copies in spite of their artistic weaknesses.
John Dos Passos (January 14, 1896): The tumult — and economic disparities — of the early twentieth century inspired Dos Passos to write his U.S.A. trilogy, for which he is most famous.
Molière (January 15, 1622): Molière is considered by many to be the greatest French comedic playwright ever; his most famous works are Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope.
Ernest J. Gaines (January 15, 1933): Gaines was best known for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Gathering of Old Men, both of which were adapted into movies, and A Lesson Before Dying, which was a bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner.
Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933): Sontag wrote several novels and short stories, including Death Kit and the National Book Award-winning In America, in addition to her acclaimed essay collections, such as the career-launching Against Interpretation.
Anton Chekhov (January 17, 1860): Chekhov’s legacy is due in large part to his plays, like Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard, but he’s also described as a master of the modern short story.
Robert Cormier (January 17, 1925): Cormier was an award-winning journalist before he turned to fiction; his The Chocolate War is among the first novels to look at the darker parts of adolescent life.
A. A. Milne (January 18, 1882): Wildly famous now for creating Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne also wrote a detective novel, The Red House Mystery, as well as plays for adults and children, including a stage adaptation of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
Categories: Today in Books